Immured
by ulstergirl
Summary: Their stars were hitched a long time ago. BA pairing.


**Adult content and vocabulary. Set post-Season 7.**

* * *

He's on suspension again, and that means while she's frowning at the microwave he's paging through the casefiles on her kitchen table, splayed images of crime scenes and autopsy diagrams. His thumb keeps sliding over his lip; he makes a low grumbled hum to himself, punctuated by the sharp rasp of pencil against yellow paper.

There was a time when she'd thought there would be a happy ending for them. Once, when they had been playing at married, a long time ago, before his hair was quite so touched with grey, before Declan. She had thought everything would be before-nephew and after-nephew, while she was pregnant and so miserably divided over knowing this baby was _hers_ and knowing he would never be _hers_ again. Instead everything, even that misery pales in comparison, to what happened once Declan and Jo happened.

He treats her like she's fragile now. She used to dress in red; she used to tease him during stakeouts. She used to feel invincible in their partnership, back when there was nothing to fight against. Now everything is something to fight against.

But their stars were hitched a long time ago, she thinks, blowing her tea cool before the first sip.

He wakes her at eleven o'clock, something about a break. She can see the sullen lamplight gleaming in that damned stubble he keeps not shaving off, and for an instant, she sees the way he used to be, in his eyes, before his mother cast such fine and permanent doubt on everything he had ever done, everything he ever was. His gaze softens and he touches her cheek and she has to force herself not to glare, not to snap back. It's knee-jerk now. She's angry at everything that has been forced on him, and angry most of all at him, because he could've stopped this. There was a time he wasn't the victim. There was a time he wasn't _broken_.

His stubble rasps against her mouth. It's been a year since their last round of _we-shouldn't/we-didn't/last-time_. He has all the time in the world to stop her, as she toes out of her shoes, strips her pants off. He doesn't. He pushes his hips forward and she straddles his lap, face to face, as she urges him hard for her.

He shakes his head, but he can't take his eyes off what her fingers, her palm are doing to his cock. "We," he begins, and his brow furrows, just that little bit.

She's beginning to think he needs this more than she ever did.

"Yeah, we."

He comes quicker, now, just as her hips lock into place against his, at the shuddering height of her first thrust, and she thinks of him grinning, 'tight _missile_ in your pocket,' and how that was the first day she'd known. He slides his thumb between her legs and she braces against the couch and grinds against him, and he glances his lips over her collarbone, the rough denim of his shirt rubbing against her nipples through her bra.

God.

She always looks at him, after, and wonders how he manages, how he can bear to retreat, to make his smiles shy and brief, to push her away. She thinks sometimes that this is why Ross gives them time off; he to shuffle through files and theories with no witnesses, she to serve as his muse, his lightning rod.

But that's just as much a lie as any of the rest of it, like when she calls him at 3 a.m. and lies about the nightmares, like when she knows he's gone too deep and his pissing Ross off is only a matter of time and proximity. It's too late for her to correct this path.

But she'll never leave, now. Declan, Declan alone, he might be the single worst thing that has ever happened to Bobby, but he still managed to get one thing right.

Bobby is worth saving. At all costs.

She just doesn't have that much left to give.

He smiles, a little uncertainly, still sheathed inside her, and she kisses him and tastes scotch and those damned cigarettes and the clean taste of him, and aches with longing.

"Eames."

And then, later, it's the first night in a long time that she hears someone snore beside her, even through a sharp elbow in the ribs, a huffed outraged sigh.

It's the first time in a long time she doesn't sleep with the lights on.


End file.
